The strange comfort of it all, Aubrey told herself, mostly to lie to herself and make herself feel better, was that she's actually had worse weeks.
She just wished she hadn't read that email.
The email came in while she was in flight, and while she loves her phone and is nearly inseparable from it, she should have recognized the email for the harbinger of doom it turned out to be.
Instead all she saw was that the Vice President of Operations was telling her that despite her filed leave, since she was the only member of Oversight in Georgia or even remotely nearby, her presence was "advisable" at the project negotiation happening in their Atlanta office. The email from Kathryn, the liaison assigned to the southeastern region, had confirmed the necessity of Aubrey's presence as a representative of the Oversight Committee, as well as having a direct line of communication with the VP of Operations, since apparently the client intent on voiding the existing contract doubted the Sales and Marketing representative's promises without someone validating their claims.
And unfortunately for Aubrey, she had been designated to be that someone.
She knew how long negotiations could take, especially 11th hour deals, and she knew it was unlikely that she'd be able to meet Stacie at Barden before semifinals, which was why she took a detour at a flower shop to have flowers delivered to the auditorium, a precaution in case she was late and would need something to buy her way back into Stacie's good side. She had it addressed to Jesse as a safety measure, in case she arrived late, with specific instructions to the florist and to whomever would be at the box office to give the flowers to Jesse, whom Stacie said would also be picking up his ticket from the theater because Beca kept forgetting to give him one, and even indicated his phone number, which Stacie had given Aubrey in case he mistakenly took both tickets they were leaving at the front of the theater.
She had briefly debated on whether or not to inform Stacie about being called in, but things were already strained between them, following the disaster of the previous weekend, and Aubrey knew Stacie wasn't the biggest fan of the recent changes in Aubrey's job description. The last thing she wanted was to upset Stacie right before the Bellas' ICCA semifinals, and she decided it inevitably wouldn't matter, once she made it to the auditorium and the Bellas were safely en route to the finals for the third straight year.
She only realized she had underestimated how badly negotiations were going when both Kathryn and Jed, their Business Development representative, looked infinitely grateful when she joined them at the office. Kathryn, for one, had been near the point of tears, and as someone who had been driven to tears more than once in her own career, Aubrey had felt instinctively protective of the liaison.
And, yes, maybe the part of her that liked being needed had kicked in.
Her boss hadn't helped when she had instructed Aubrey to keep her phone line open and available, working out the details of the deal with another team in New York, figuring out what the client wanted against what they actually needed, and the realistic goals of each item.
Aubrey knew she had been watching the clock, calculating when the semifinals were starting, and tried to convince herself she had more time by theorizing that the Bellas could be the last group to perform, and maybe she should wait until the winners were announced…
She hadn't told anyone why she had taken Friday off when she was already scheduled to go on a week-long vacation not soon after, but it wasn't hard to discern why someone who hardly ever took a day off for a year was suddenly using up leave time and offsetting her overtime hours, and Kathryn kept shooting her sympathetic looks throughout the ordeal, knowing exactly why Aubrey was in Georgia in the first place.
It hadn't helped, and as the night wore on Aubrey came to accept that she wasn't leaving anytime before daylight.
Once everyone had come to agreeable terms in the early morning hours, Aubrey had to help Kathryn figure out the logistics of the new deal, being more familiar with the resources that would be utilized and the details Operations and Oversight were promising. By the time everything was said and done, Aubrey had been running on fumes, and when they were given time to take a break and wait for the final confirmation from the client on their approval of the negotiated deal, that was the first time Aubrey took a look at her phone.
Notifications of pictures on Facebook and Twitter, which she had assumed was about their ICCA semifinal, which was the only reason why she had checked them first, and was greeted by a series of pictures from the celebratory party. And it was all fun and games until she noticed that the pictures that included Stacie either had her hamming for the camera with other Bellas, or she was in the background dancing.
With people.
A lot of people.
A lot of other people Aubrey didn't recognize.
It took everything in her not to just call Stacie up and ask her about it, but she knew she was liable to say something she didn't really mean, just to displace her feelings of guilt over missing the Bellas' semifinals, and ultimately decided she had to carefully choose what she wanted to say because it had been a mess of a night. So she had left her phone on a nearby desk with everyone else's phones, while she went to get coffee.
If she had known what would happen next, maybe she would have reconsidered the decision of letting things lie until she figured out what she had really wanted to say.
She can take the blame for what happened because she had always known that between her and Stacie, she would be the one to screw up the relationship. They were making things up as they went along, but Stacie was still the idealist between them, the one who hadn't been burned by one too many relationships; the one who would do or say anything to sustain the relationship. And Aubrey...
…should have known better.
She should have known better than to think forgiveness was as simple as asking for it and believing they were back on track after expressing their love verbally and physically. She should have known that just because long distance had been working for her and Stacie the past few months that the relationship could sustain itself under duress. She should have known her easy dismissal of Stacie's questions regarding Kathryn hadn't help assuage any doubts the younger woman had.
She should have known that in the end, despite doing everything possible to not ruin the relationship, she was still fully capable of screwing it up.
And she'd capped off that shit show by taking the cowardly way out, too afraid of the realization that even if Stacie did call, what she had to say may not be what Aubrey wanted to hear, that she had taken the assignment to check in on their England office, leaving only a message with Chloe where she would be and why she wouldn't be responding to calls in a timely manner.
She had even considered forfeiting her leave time, since it was pointless to go to San Jose del Cabo by herself like a sad tourist, but it was hard enough to get approved leave time, and she knew she'd be left alone for the week since she had closed a deal just a week before.
But she needed to leave. To get away. To do what she'd done all those months ago in Philadelphia and just be somewhere – anywhere – else.
Several phone calls - trading and calling in favors from people she knew - and a Facebook exchange later, and she had arrangements for a week-long stay in California with a festival pass to both Coachella weekends. After all, if she was going to wallow in misery over some of the choices she'd made, she figured she might as well do it surrounded by music and in a scene very different from her usual.
Trina and Patty had both been in her graduating class, and Trina had once even been a Bella, one of the very few who left the a cappella group, a direct result of Alice's tyrannical rule. She'd also shared a few classes with Patty, which was why she'd extended an invitation to them to share the house when she'd seen they were also going to be at Coachella that weekend.
In hindsight, she should have realized it had been too easy.
What she hadn't told Chloe, hoping to buy herself some time with Stacie, was that the trip to England was only going to be for a few days, and she'd gone back to New York where she'd made her travel arrangements. Her leave time wasn't until Saturday, which was why her flight to California had come in early on Saturday morning.
She knew Patty and Trina had two other friends from Barden with them, which is why she had claimed the pool house for herself, giving herself the option on whether or not she would be hanging out with them while they were in California.
Because she knew she had some hard choices to make, and she didn't know if she could do that and be social at the same time.
She'd been awake for her flight to California.
Because she knew she owed Stacie an apology. A lot, probably. During their last phone call she'd said she was trying her best, but Aubrey wasn't so sure that was exactly true: because her "best" went to making sure she did her job with Oversight, ensuring the company operated smoothly despite any potential and actual snags. She took meetings and fielded phone calls with local and regional managers, with the liaisons, collaborating and coordinating with coworkers that her numbers matched theirs, that people weren't stagnating in their jobs and she was moving people through the pipeline properly.
Her job was at least eighty percent of her life, but she would like to think that she gave Stacie the full twenty she had left.
But the cracks in their relationship had started to show, highlighted most when her lousy attempt at getting Stacie to North Carolina to introduce her to her family had backfired in a major way and she had been far too willing to pin the blame on Stacie.
She had rectified that quickly, realizing the stupidity of such an opinion, but it didn't take away from the fact that she had thought it, and worse: she had expressed as much to Stacie.
And she knew, as she had maintained from the start, that Stacie deserved better. She deserved better than a part-time girlfriend, someone who sometimes could only manage to send simple sentences as a reply to Stacie's text messages at the end of long work days. Certainly, Stacie Conrad deserved better than a girl who could only offer twenty percent of her time.
Because nothing had changed: she loved Stacie, and she would do anything to still call Stacie her girlfriend, but the job would always take precedence in Aubrey's life. She had spent too long building her life around her job and being defined by it, and it would suck beyond the telling of it, but she very well couldn't continue putting Stacie second.
The only flicker of hope she continued to have was the fact that Stacie hadn't tried calling, which she liked to believe was Stacie still trying to decide what she really wanted.
Because Stacie's unintended hit had landed in a solid manner, and Aubrey knew there was only one foregone conclusion, and she hoped that when it came Stacie would be merciful, even if she didn't deserve it.
Reaching some kind of peace with that inevitable end, the only thing that had stayed her hand in texting Chloe to announce being back Stateside, knowing she would relate that information to her roommate and fellow Bella, was a call from the one who had arranged for her festival pass, whose only opportunity to meet and accommodate her before the 11AM opening of the festival gates was at five AM.
The morning run had turned out to be a good idea, since it had been ages since she'd done any running that wasn't on a treadmill, and while it wasn't quite as invigorating as she'd hoped it would be – she was so out of shape, damn – it at least helped her calm down a little.
But upon returning to the house, taking the side entrance to the pool house, she'd felt an inexplicable shiver down her spine, a warm and familiar feeling washing over her, which was strange given her location; but the familiarity made her wonder, and it was the only reason why she had stopped to figure out why it was happening.
They were separated by a pool, an outdoor patio, and closed glass doors between them, and still Aubrey felt her heart stop at the sight of Stacie, seated at the dining table, gazes meeting the moment she turned her head.
She didn't know how long she and Stacie stared at each other, the avalanche of emotions hitting Aubrey to the point wherein she couldn't pick or choose which one she felt most, and while a large part of her wanted to cover the distance between them and just make contact, just to prove to herself that Stacie was real, in the end she picked retreat.
Ducking into the pool house and locking it closed, before taking a seat at the edge of the bed and wondering what the hell she was going to do now.
The thought of Stacie showing up at her door was met with both hope and dread, but Aubrey knew Stacie wouldn't do that, a knowledge that was rooted in the fact that Aubrey had given Stacie a very specific instruction, to figure out what she wanted and not to call until she had done that, and Stacie took that seriously.
Because everything was fun and rosy when they were together, but the real work and effort came when they were apart.
And they have never been further apart than they were now.
Aubrey knew there was only one foregone conclusion, but hadn't considered that this being Stacie's first real relationship, that maybe the girl, smart as she was, just hadn't figured that part out yet. That Stacie would want to think things through a little more. That maybe she didn't want her first relationship to fizzle and die out.
It's weird, how she'd gone from wanting Stacie to come to North Carolina to meet her family, to flying to England to lick her wounds, returned to New York with the impulse to try and win Stacie back – if Stacie even still wanted her back - only to head to California and reach the conclusion that Stacie had to break up with her.
But Stacie being at Coachella meant making adjustments to her plans.
Mainly the one where she thought being social could be an option.
This called for contingency plans.
The first real surprise came when it was Beca, and not Chloe, to be the first Bella to show up at her door. And as if reading her mind, Beca immediately explained, as a way of greeting, "Chloe's still asleep."
Aubrey nodded, joining Beca outside and closing the door to the pool house behind her. "Are all the Bellas here?"
Beca nodded. "Fat Amy got us passes for the first weekend."
Aubrey quickly glanced over at the house.
"Glitch in the hotel reservations," Beca admitted.
"Didn't confirm the booking?" Aubrey guessed.
Beca nodded.
Aubrey wasn't even surprised, since Fat Amy was very easily distracted. She sighed. "Look, I'm just here on vacation, okay? You guys do your thing, I'll do mine. I have a friend also doing Coachella, don't worry about me cramping your style, or whatever."
"No, that's…" Beca shook her head. "Look, I know break ups are hard, and—" she stopped abruptly when she saw Aubrey visibly blanch. "What?"
Aubrey glanced back over at the house.
Beca followed her gaze, before turning back to Aubrey, slightly alarmed. "Wait."
"Is that what she said?" Aubrey asked quietly.
"No, she…" Beca winced, and shook her head. "She actually hasn't said anything."
Aubrey cast a frown upon her. "Then why would you even say that?"
"I don't know!" Beca threw her hands up. "Because she's been sulking and you missed semis, and you're alone at Coachella, which, let's face it, kind of a red flag…"
"So I'm rebounding with a bunch of hipster strangers now?" Aubrey asked, crossing her arms across her chest.
Beca rolled her eyes. "You're such an ass."
"And you're terrible at this." Aubrey returned. She ran a hand through her hair, and sighed. "I'm on vacation, Beca. And I have a friend who works with the event. That's all. I didn't know you were going to be here, but you're here now and Trina and her friends are paying for the house rental. This doesn't have to be weird."
"It's already weird." Beca pointed out.
Aubrey conceded that point.
Beca blew out a breath, before dryly noting to Aubrey, "They're making me learn new music for our set mixes."
Aubrey glanced at her, and feigned sympathy. "Aww, are you pulling too many samples from too many different genres?"
Beca paused, took a beat to remember why the words sounded familiar, and then turned to glare at Aubrey. "I hate you."
Aubrey grinned.
Despite herself, Beca started to smile, as well. "So you're here for the weekend?"
"The whole week."
Beca paused, and pointed at the house. "You don't, like… own the house, do you?"
Aubrey looked at her.
"Because we need to talk about that list of rules…"
"It's not mine. One of our managers does."
"Oh." Beca relented. Then: "And this is okay?"
"She really rents it out for Coachella." Aubrey replied. "They just had the pool fixed, which is why it was available."
"Did anyone know you were coming?"
"I told Trina I would." Aubrey shrugged. "It's fine, Beca."
"It's really not," Beca answered.
They both glanced towards the house. They both knew exactly how complicated things had just become, and maybe Beca felt kinship with Aubrey, and Chloe would always be on Aubrey's side, but Beca couldn't exactly swear under oath that the rest of the Barden Bellas would be in any way diplomatic or civil in the Aubrey-Stacie stand-off.
Aubrey shook her head, and glanced briefly at Beca as her lips quirked into a smile. "Did you come and see me just so we could bond, Frodo?"
"Shut up."
"And how do you even know that breakups are hard? You've been in one relationship... that you're still in."
"I listen to Adele, okay? Stop it."
Aubrey laughed.
Beca smiled, mentally patting herself in the back for being able to get Aubrey to lighten up a little, before she asked, cutting to the chase: "What are you going to do about Stacie?"
Aubrey sighed, because it was easy to tell herself the smart thing for her and Stacie to do was break up, but the reality of that prospect was too much for her to really grasp. She smiled sadly. "I don't know."